Murder in Cormyr - Chet Williamson [0]
Mysteries 01 - Murder in
Cormyr
By
1
I don't know what was more alarming that autumn in Ghars-the drought, the roving agents of the Zhentarim and the Iron Throne, the ghost, or the upcoming visit of the Grand Council of Cormyr's Merchants' Guild. In retrospect, I guess it was the murders.
Not that those other occurrences weren't matters for concern. The farms around Ghars had had no rain for weeks. Most of the wells had dried up, the crops were scanty, and the local squires were eyeing their account books the way a hungry man looks at the broken woodwork of his false teeth, with much dismay and worry over what comes next. What water remained was diverted into a public cistern, a huge wooden tank zealously guarded by Khlerat, the nearsighted retiree who served as Ghars's unofficial master of public works. And since Ghars is a market town that serves a farming community, a long dry spell was about as welcome a visitor as a slimy Zhentarim agent at a meeting of Cormyr's War Wizards.
Speaking of slimy Zhentarim agents, the crack contingent of Purple Dragons stationed in Ghars had apprehended two of them in as many months, no doubt plotting to invade Cormyr, overthrow King Azoun, or at the very least assassinate some noble of renown. They're like that.
The Dragons also captured one agent of the Iron Throne secret society, a group that I viewed as far less of a threat. I mean, come now-a secret society of merchants? Ooo, scary… Still, Azoun had banished them from the kingdom for a year, so he must have had a good reason.
By the second week of Eleint, I was wishing that he would have banished the Cormyrean Merchants' Guild along with their wicked Iron Throne counterparts. Every other word out of the mouths of the local merchants and farmers concerned how honored little Ghars was to host the high mucky-mucks of the guild a few days hence.
My master's taciturn ways seemed most welcome after a shopping trip to the town, where the greengrocer and the butcher and the clothier would natter on for hours about the guild council's eagerly anticipated arrival. What the big deal was I didn't know, since if these officials were like most merchants I'd known, they'd be sour of face, tight with their purse strings, and sober as judges.
And pale as ghosts, most of them, which brings us to the subject on the minds of most of the residents. Fastred's ghost, to be exact. To give you the proper spirit of things, pun most definitely intended, let me quote from a writer far more highly skilled than myself-that great historian Carcroft the Long, who, in his Anthropologic and Folkloric History of the Settled Lands (Volume III), states: find in those days in the land between Sembia and Cormyr, there dwelt within the Vast Swamp a reaver and a chieftain high Fastred. He lived in the swamp with his people, heedless of the monsters and beasties that also resided therein, such, as the men lyfa unto lizards, the goblins and trolls and grells.
He and his band of cutthroats and murderers would sweep down upon the caravans that travelled the Way of the Manticore, looting them of gems, gold, and silver. With his great battle axe would he cleave in twain those who refused to yield to him and his reavers.
Though he was pursued, even by small armies, his knowledge of the Vast Swamp was so great that he lost his pursuers always, finding solid land where others saw only muck, into which the hooves of their steeds would sink and they would quickly drown.
Fastred lived as a king within the Vast Swamp for many years, protected by the treacherous sands and muck that surrounded him, until Death came upon him, from whose fell clutch was no escape. Half his treasures did he, bequeath to his warriors to share amongst them, while the other half, wealth beyond measure, was sealed With him in his tomb, an isle of rock in the swamp.
It is told by those in the district how his glowing ghost, still clad in armor and bearing his great axe, guards his hoarde, threatening any who may come nigh by mischance or by purpose. Of all the terrors of the